Bad Public Policy

The bridge failure will end up costing about one billion dollars (below) and if our policy makers would wake up, they will see that it was about five hundred times more expensive than the requested bridge maintenance that would have kept the bridge in "pristine condition"**

Are we doomed to see our once safe city streets, superior schools and, child protection system, fall apart just like the bridge? As a CASA volunteer and child advocate, I am well connected to the benefits of taking care of children when they are young to avoid their collapse when they are juveniles.

Former Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Blatz states, "ninety percent of the youth in our juvenile justice system have come through child protection". Identified and treated early, young children can be given the skills to succeed in school and our community. Ignored because of our new anti tax paralysis, the serious issues faced by children in child protection are not dealt with until someone gets hurt (and it is exponentially more costly to institutionalize people over their lifetimes than it is to give them the skills to lead normal lives). http://www.invisiblechildren.org/

Minneapolis City Pages September 5th, Economy In Freefall article quoted Governor Pawlenty as estimating the addition costs of gas and extra miles due to the bridge collapse at $400,000 per day (146 million dollars over the next twelve months).

An accurate calculation must include a fair minimum amount for the (lower estimate) 144,000 cars that used this bridge every day. Forty eight cents per mile is the IRS allowance for automobile deductions and this does not include the headache factor of stopped traffic and longer commutes that I seem to be experiencing.

Assuming an average of five additional miles for each car each way (some people take the longer 694/494 route around town and others drive fewer miles through downtown city streets or the 280 detour). Multiplying five miles each way for 144,000 cars per day equals 1.4 million miles per day times the IRS forty eight cents equals $691,000 per day, or almost twice the governors estimate.

Even if the bridge is completed in eighteen months from the date of collapse, this additional cost will be almost four hundred million dollars. With no extra consideration for the ten to twenty minutes at each end of our commute we can honestly call this a hard cost of the bridge failure.

Add the 393 million dollar estimate (StarTrib Sticker Shock 10-2-07) for the new bridge, and the sure to be substantial lawsuit settlements for wrongful death and injury from the victims of this disaster, and some value for the businesses that are failing because of their new inaccessibility, and a billion dollars becomes a realistic estimate of the total hard cost of NOT MAINTAINING OUR BRIDGE.

**New York's twenty year veteran bridge engineer, Samuel Schwartz (NYT OP-ED 8.13.07) estimated that an average of 178,000 dollars annual maintenance would keep each one of his states bridges in pristine condition.

It was five hundred times more expensive for our public policy makers to ignore the advice of the bridge maintenance engineers than it would have been to listen to them. The no tax people have cost Minnesotans a billion dollars and killed and wounded one hundred and thirteen people (and added substantial time to our commutes).

I am making a similar calculation for the children in America's child protection systems, http://www.karagroup.org/. Three million children per year are reported to child protection agencies, 90% of the children in juvenile justice have come through C.P., and almost all felons have come through J.J. The cost of extensive institutionalization, the crimes they commit, their impact on our schools, city streets, and quality of life are profound.

Early childhood programs with more training and resources for child protection workers would save us billions in prisons, schools, courts, insurance, and pain as at risk children become functional adults instead of felons and preteen moms.

Home values within our inner cities are often half (or less) than they would be in a safe suburb. The insurance estimates of crime alone in the U.S. are between one and one point six trillion dollars annually.

It is costing us a fortune to ignore the maintenance of our bridges, courts, schools, and children.

It is time to counter the short sighted and inaccurate assumptions of the anti tax people. Our quality of life has suffered terribly with these tight fisted and mean spirited people wrecking our bridges and ruining our children.